


We're Born to Return to Home

by LiviKate



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self-Sacrificing Derek, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-04 07:50:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10271804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiviKate/pseuds/LiviKate
Summary: Derek slumped to the ground, bleeding like a glacier, slowly loosing parts of himself. The pack was safe. Scott would keep them safe.He closed his eyes and smiled a little, listening to his body trying to knit itself together too slowly to stop all the falling apart it was doing. The pain in his side was hot, radiating through him, flames of agony flickering inside him. He thought it was right for him to die in flames.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wow okay so here we go
> 
> Title from Watsky's Lovely Thing Suite: Conversations

Derek knew it was going to be bad.

The wolves weren’t winning, the faeries were stronger, meaner, crueler, and they wanted alpha blood.

Derek knew it was going to be okay.

Scott had voted for caution, for turning back. Scott didn’t want to hurt anybody, he just wanted to keep his pack safe. Derek saw Scott calling to them now, fighting not just for Stiles and Isaac, but for Erica and Boyd, too, protecting their whole shattered family.

The pack would be fine. The faeries would leave, and Scott would be a good alpha.

When the queen’s blade slid between his ribs, it felt a little like relief, hot and licking, pulling its way through his blood to spread everywhere in his frame. The fey creature grinned at him, covered his mouth with hers, swallowed when he coughed up blood. She grinned, wickedly and beautiful, her teeth stained red with his blood, wearing it like a victor.

“Go, now,” he said, with damaged, wet lungs. She pulled the knife free, covering the wound with her hand in the mockery of a caress, gathering more blood. She smeared it over her face, releasing a terrifying scream. The other fey heard it and stopped fighting, coming directly toward the queen, wolves forgotten, as if their claws and teeth were no more than thistles in the forest to avoid.

Hands reaching forward, touching the queen, touching his blood on the queen, they shimmered, glowing before disappearing. Winking out of the forest like an immediate sunset.

Derek slumped to the ground, bleeding like a glacier, slowly loosing parts of himself. The pack was safe. Scott would keep them safe.

He closed his eyes and smiled a little, listening to his body trying to knit itself together too slowly to stop all the falling apart it was doing. The pain in his side was hot, radiating through him, flames of agony flickering inside him. He thought it was right for him to die in flames.

He felt right. He would see his family. He would die saving his pack, like he should’ve done years ago. He’d lived eight years too long. No, two years too long. His life without his whole family was horrible and painful, every breath like sucking razors, but at least there was Laura. Laura who held him at night and who told him that he was worthy, that it was the two of them against the world. He gave Laura a purpose as an Alpha and that was enough purpose for him. When she died, he laid in the burned out shell of his old home and wondered why the universe didn’t just drop what remained of the roof down on him, wondering why he was still there.

Now, with the forest floor cold but growing warm with his own blood under him, he thought maybe this was why. Maybe he needed two more years to do something that would earn him a death. Two more years to fuck up and fuck up, adding misery to the world at the same speed that it swirled inside his skin, until he stumbled onto the singular opportunity to die doing something good. Like he needed to even the score before the universe let him go.

He found a lot of peace in that. He counted the people he’d just saved with all the family he got killed. Cora for Laura, delivering one sister into the loving hands of a pack who took care of her, far away from him. Melissa for his mother, the Sheriff for his father. Isaac for his only brother, his best friend. Scott for his cousin, almost the same age as him, always roughhousing and running in circles, earnest and generous in his love for everyone. Boyd for his youngest sister, who never grew old enough to speak but always looked at Derek with eyes that were full and kind. Erica for his favorite aunt, the fun one who snuck them cookies and gossip magazines, who painted his nails and told him he was okay exactly as he was. Jackson for Peter, Lydia for his grandmother, the smartest woman he ever knew. Allison for his uncle, the one who the most competitive but the best teacher.

His breath caught in his throat, gummed with blood, when fingertips fell against his face and neck. His eyes shuddered open to see Stiles, kneeling over him, eyes wide and aching, so terribly beautiful it made Derek’s chest hurt just a little more. He was talking to him, mouth making shapes but Derek just watched his lips dance, clever and sinful. His skin was ashen and sallow, like the face of the moon.

Stiles, velvet love wrapping around steel knives, the boy who was coltish and fearsome, clumsy and concentrated, skin dotted with beauty marks and glowing with magic. Stiles who was smarter than Derek but kinder than Lydia. He didn’t have Scott’s mercy or Erica’s confidence. He didn’t have the serenity Boyd did, he didn’t inspire quiet or calm. He wasn’t cautious like Isaac or cruel like Jackson, wasn’t gentle or steady or patient. He was a live wire, selectively insulated, protective and deadly.

There wasn’t a single death on Derek’s list that Stiles’ life paid for. There wasn’t anyone else in Derek’s world that was at all like Stiles.

He lifted a hand and touched Stiles’ skin, delicate and tender like he’d never been able to before. He left a blood smear on his cheek and the boy froze under his hand.

“Sorry,” Derek said, and his voice croaked, covered in blood. He wiped at the smear with his palm, cleaning his skin a little. “You’re perfect.” And Stiles was. Absolutely perfect, and he didn’t deserve to be marred by Derek’s blood or life. “Don’t remember me,” he said, feelings flames flickering closer to his heavy lungs, his extremities cold already, like snow. Or ash.

He closed his eyes again and thought that maybe Stiles would be saved by his death, and he smiled.

 

 

He woke with the smell of home in his nose. He turned his head into the pillow and inhaled the scent of love and comfort, mate and home all around him. He opened his eyes and found himself nearly naked in Stiles’ bed and he smiled.

He’d been right about heaven, when he’d been brave enough to wonder.

He thought he’d probably lay here forever, his body warm and heavy under the sheet. Relaxed and peaceful, he’d lay here forever until Stiles crawled in next to him.

He didn’t have to wait long, however, and he was startled out of his eternal rest when the door banged open and Stiles came spilling into the room, eyes darting directly toward him and swimming in so many emotions that Derek wished he could pause the moment to catalogue them all.

“Oh my God, Derek,” he very much shouted, moving with fast, falling steps that delivered him with excess momentum onto the edge of the bed. The shaking of his weight caused the side of Derek’s chest to light up in pain and he realized in an instant that he was breathing, his heart was laboring in his chest, he smelled like blood and sweat and Stiles was glaring at him with angry relief.

“Oh,” he said simply, one hand coming up to cup the burning hole in his side, skin closed across the surface but still open and mending inside.

“Yeah _oh_ ,” Stiles spat at him, the vitriol in his voice at odds with the gentleness of his hands where they splayed over his chest, fingertips just kissing his naked collarbones.

“I’m sorry,” Derek said, staring at the furious frown on Stiles’ mouth and the glimmering agony in his eyes.

“For almost dying or for being happy about it?” he bit back, hurt clouding over his features.

Derek didn’t say anything, just stared back, trying to drown himself in those eyes. Stiles coughed out an ugly laugh and a tear fell onto his cheek, water on the moon.

“You’re sorry you woke up,” he said, hands turning to fists and the deep pools of his eyes overflowing. Derek wanted to wrap his hands around his wrists, to feel the fragile bones and furious beating of blood. He wanted to wipe the tears off his face, clearing the angry flush from his cheeks, replacing it with the ache of too much joy. He didn’t. He wasn’t allowed. He appeased the wolf in his chest by relishing in the splash of every tear that left Stiles’ skin to fall onto his chest, absorbing whatever sadness he could manage.

“Why, Derek?” he asked, pushing down on his chest with his fists, lashing and biting with fear. “We gave you a family. We’re trying so hard to make it worth it. It’s a good family.” His voice was earnest in a way he seldom was, no sarcasm or bite to his words to hide behind. He sounded raw and flayed, open and honest.

“I had a family,” Derek answered, murmuring reassuring sounds when Stiles’ face collapsed further. “I killed them. I needed to save you.”

“By dying?” he protested. “You’re part of this family, we need you.” Derek shook his head tiredly.

“Have to give back, replace everyone I took away. Balance.”

“That’s not how the world works,” Stiles insisted, one hand unfurling to cup his cheek, as gentle as a petal.

“I did it, though,” Derek answered, honesty cracking his own voice wide even as his head ached with it all, tired and weary. “We wouldn’t have won that fight. I evened the score, saved my family. Except you.”

“Except me?” Stiles asked, and he had a look on his face Derek had seen before, brow furrowed as he limped his way through a Latin translation, dying to understand the unreadable. “What does that mean?”

“There’s never been anyone like you. I didn’t kill anyone like you. It was going to be me. Even.” His head hurt. His eyes were heavy. His body hummed with the arduous work of putting itself back together. He wondered if all his pieces were in the right spaces.

“I don’t want you to die,” Stiles said, whispering it like it was a secret. The hand that had been gentle on his face twitched and flexed like it want to hold on. “You don’t need to die for me, it doesn’t need to be even. You don’t need a zero net effect,” Stiles insisted, leaning down to press their foreheads together. “You can be positive. We can do it together.”

Derek fell asleep with the smell of a house in mourning in his nose, the hateful relief of still having something to hold on to.

 

 

 

The next time he woke up he was even more sure it was heaven. Stiles was curled around him, pressed tightly to his side, his nose tucked under the curve of his jaw, breath fanning over his throat like a lover’s caress. But when he opened his eyes, he smelled the blood clotted under Stiles’ skin from the fight, the lingering scent of ozone clinging to his skin from the magic he’d used. It wasn’t heaven, and Derek supposed that could be a good thing, as long as Stiles was with him.

He turned his head towards the other heartbeat in the room, meeting the eyes of Melissa, rimmed red with relief and gratitude.

“Hey there,” she said quietly. “Feeling better?” she asked, and Derek listened to his body, feeling the empty ache but knowing it was smaller than before.

“Yeah,” he answered, on a small puff of air, half his attention on the steady beat of the human’s heart, pressed against him.

“You tried to die on us,” she said, and there wasn’t as much reproach in his voice as he’d expected.

“I tried to save the pack.”

“You did,” she assured, placing a gentle hand on his arm. “You also almost died.”

He shrugged, as much as he could with one shoulder, unwilling to disturb the moment of peace crowded close on his other side.

“Seemed fair,” was all he said.

“It wouldn’t have been fair to Stiles,” she said, and Derek winced at how right she was. Not for the same reasons he believed, but right all the same.

“I don’t deserve him,” he said quietly, closing his eyes and holding his breath, pretending for just one painful moment that it was his mother he was confessing to.

“You don’t get to decided that, honey,” she said, and Derek could hear her voice for just a moment. He opened his eyes and smiled at the family he had now, not the same but still good. “He loves you.”

“He shouldn’t,” he said, even as he pressed a fleeting kiss to the top of his head.

“He does. We all do. You’re worth that,” she said firmly.

“If he says so,” he whispered quietly, heart quickening when Stiles smiled in his sleep, smacking his lips and snuggling closer. “I’ll try to be.”

“You don’t have to try, you already are.” Melissa reached forward and squeezed his hand, turned up on the sheets at his side. “You just have to be here.”


End file.
